Nearly a million workers won't get a consumer protection in the U.S. health reform law meant to cap insurance costs because the government exempted their employers.Thirty companies and organizations, including McDonald's (MCD) and Jack in the Box (JACK), won't be required to raise the minimum annual benefit included in low-cost health plans, which are often used to cover part-time or low-wage employees.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which provided a list of exemptions, said it granted waivers in late September so workers with such plans wouldn't lose coverage from employers who might choose instead to drop health insurance altogether.

Without waivers, companies would have had to provide a minimum of $750,000 in coverage next year, increasing to $1.25 million in 2012, $2 million in 2013 and unlimited in 2014.

The biggest single waiver, for 351,000 people, was for the United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund, a New York union providing coverage for city teachers. The waivers are effective for a year and were granted to insurance plans and companies that showed that employee premiums would rise or that workers would lose coverage without them, Santillo says.

Rock and a Hard Place, I think.

Consider that if they weren't exempted, many of these workers would find themselves losing coverage through their employers.

May any merit generated by on-line discussionBe dedicated to the Ultimate Benefit of All Sentient Beings.

"Nearly a million workers won't get a consumer protection in the U.S. health reform law meant to cap insurance costs because the government exempted their employers."

It's not that these companies effectively lobbied for specific exemptions nor that these companies could still electively do this, its that......the government did something So "the government" is responsible for this exemption. Read...read not just the superficial, read what is the message.

Which reinforces the corporate rule of lesser government...... lesser regulation and all the rest, no governmental influence. The american public is led down that road of misspeak.

Spending roughly twice that on health care than european nations of similiarity because "the government" is always doing such bad things. And receiving a result which has the american public no healthier not a whit than their european cousins. Because any governmental influence upon or regualtion of the health care industry is socialism, and consequently a very bad bad thing.

Doesn't once again...pass the giggle test. Makes me retch actually...how these americans are being misused and abused through their ignorance, to which this corporate news attests in small part.No one even notices how they are being manipulated. They have become so dull.Sheep they will find themselves completely sheared. No assets they will hold, only work their lot from dawn to dusk with recreational pursuit if ever allowed to only buy things they do not need or engage in only recreation which is on monetary basis employed. The one asset they may hold by proportional wealth.... their home, 20% loss in three years time and now by reverse mortgage, that one asset by death is eliminated entirely. Do any of them ever once consider someone is on the other side of the transferance of wealth 20% from loss to gain. NO never do they question that. Never do they question the lease upon their lives that is credit card nor why a vehicle is now not owned but leased....and home their last real asset so debased in value. Corporate ownership it is called. Corporation considered as human be in constitutional interpretation so determined in law. So corporate influence in all with asset base so disproportionate the result disproportionate. Exemplifed in all.

It is so sad what is happening to these peoples. They are being raped and don't even have a clue.

To what aim to reinforce their corporate claims I wonder?. Seems they hold such media enough to see them through. Do they need all, every blog every comment versed.

Is it people trying (like in years and ages past) to emulate what they themselves do not employ?. I am like them..... I think the same....see see me as them, though no assets I claim...it that the thinking? So thought I may envision myself as one of them.

Or is it other, steal from me, again and again.... once more I have come to like it, I enjoy more?

Or is it other...I find them so dispicable in their stupidity I verse their claims and perpetuate their aim...as the result of this will be slavery born, in ignorance thought deserved?

I wonder at times the latter. The former the corporate lie...I firmly reject it. NO government inspiration this be. Wake up, its time to clearly wake up, if not forever in slumber one threatens to lie.

"This order considers that progress can be achieved more rapidly during a single month of self-transformation through terrifying conditions in rough terrain and in "the abode of harmful forces" than through meditating for a period of three years in towns and monasteries"....Takpo Tashi Namgyal.